Pages

Monday, April 8, 2013

While everyone was doing something else...

While everyone was putting on their Facebook either about how President Obama wants to take guns away from law-abiding citizens or talking about how while President Obama was distracting us by talking about guns he protected Monsanto. The so-called Monsanto Protection Act was included in the bill that avoided a government shutdown. Since we no longer allow our President to have a line-item veto, the choice became somewhat obvious. That's the unfortunate case in politics today. To avoid situations like this, we need to allow the line-item veto or forbid amendments to be added to necessary legislation. Unfortunately, despite a limited line-item veto authorization being approved by the House of Representatives in 2012, it will be awhile before we have that again. I digress.

My point for talking about all of this is that if you're going to assign blame to President Obama for allowing the Monsanto Protection Act to go through, then you have to assign credit/blame for other things that were included. I'm guessing, since the bulk of the criticism was levied from Republicans, that while other things were included in the passage of the bill, if it's good it's because of Congress and if it's bad it's Barack Hussein Obama's fault. So, if you assign blame to Obama for the Monsanto Protection Act, you can assign blame for the following gun laws that were passed. While I think it's unwarranted for either, if you are to be logically consistent, you would have to conclude that President Obama isn't going to take your guns or is protecting your rights to have a firearm. The following gun laws were included in the bill to prevent the government shutdown:

1. Prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from requiring gun dealers to conduct annual inventories to ensure that they have not lost guns or had them stolen.

2. Retains a broad definition of “antique” guns that can be imported into the United States outside of normal regulations.

3. Prevents the A.T.F. from refusing to renew a dealer’s license for lack of business.

4. Requires the bureau to attach a disclaimer to data about guns to indicate that it “cannot be used to draw broad conclusions about firearms-related crimes.”